MMA analyst Luke Thomas says he has lost job opportunities connected to the UFC because of his political views, telling viewers on his show that he is certain the decision to speak openly about politics has cost him work.
“I know for a fact that I’ve lost out on jobs because of that. Like, in recently, too. Relatively recently. I know that for a fact,” Thomas said.
Thomas, who has covered mixed martial arts for roughly two decades, explained that continuing his prior career path would mean he could “no longer be able to speak freely.” He described the realization as one of two forces that pushed him into what he called a midlife crisis, the other being his disillusionment with how MMA itself has changed.
Thomas said he watched the sport become “a vector for not just right-wing politics, but like a particularly angry and a low IQ version of it,” and that witnessing the shift left him questioning his own role in building up the industry over the years.
He said it “made me feel guilt about helping to promote this the last 20 years and secure its interests.”
He also pointed to what he sees as a decline in the quality of MMA coverage more broadly, contrasting past “high level writers doing high level thinking” with current content he described dismissively, saying coverage had reached a point where outlets ask questions like whether leg locks make you gay.
Despite the toll it has taken, Thomas said he believes he can build a career around political commentary if MMA opportunities continue to shrink. He said he signed a new contract last week for a collaboration with what he called “a very big company in the political space,” appeared on CNN, and received shout-outs from commentators Kyle Kulinski and Hasan Piker.
Still, he was clear that this was not the path he wanted.
“If we could go back to how things were in 2019, give or take, I would give every last bit of this up permanently,” he said, adding that he would return to his happiest period in the industry, sometime around the start of the COVID era through 2023, “instantly” if he could.
Thomas, 47, admitted the uncertainty weighs on him personally.
“I’m frightened about what’s happening. And I don’t mean out in the country, but I mean personally,” he said, adding that he does not want to be forced into a career change at this stage of his life.
He said he views MMA’s current environment as “so controlled and so stilted” that there is little room left for the kind of work he wants to do, and that continued contraction in the sport’s media landscape may make a full move into political content a necessity rather than a choice.
